[Closed] Wear a helmet FFS

Wearing a helmet gives your more confidence. More confidence = better riding = less chance of an accident. Play the odds. If you are going to be cycling seriously, then take it seriously.

I dont really know anything about the design of helmets and how much actual protection they offer in a big crash, but I have experience of a similar accident in Greece. I had taken my helmet off for a big climb (road riding) and forgot (or neglected to) put it back on at the summit. I lost it at about 40mph on the descent and hit the road pretty hard. I will never forget the sound and feeling of my head hitting the tarmac. Regardless of the actual level protection offered by a helemt, it gives you a couple of inches between your head and whatever it is that you are unfortunate enough to be headbutting. That must be a good thing, however you look at it.

Also, where else would you mount your helmet cam? Assuming we all agree that handlebar footage is rubbish!

I really hope your pal is okay and makes a speedy recovery.

Given that many helmet manufacturers are American and given the high levels of litigation in the US I think there it's a safe assumption that helmets a) do a reasonable job in many cases and b) don't actually cause injury.
I've had one serious off, thankfully at fairly low speed, but from the marks I found on my helmet afterwards I was glad I had it between the ground and my skull. My son was also pleased he was wearing one when he was around ten and trying to pull wheelies on the drive. He looped it in the end, winded himself and banged his head on the deck. Again he was pleased to have a helmet on. Nuff said.

Markenduro - best wishes to your mate, sounds like you did him proud just to be with him and get him help!
Tandem, why not wear a motorbike helmet? do they offer more protection?
Me- I'll stick to me Giro

I got hit by a car last year I was wearing my helmet. which saved a nasty injury. My head went through the windscreen as I had my lid on no injury at all to my head. The helmet is cracked in half and scuffed from glass. i never understand thise that spend thousand on a bike and cant be botherd with a lid trees and ground are harder than skin and bone when hit with force. keep your head wear a lid.

Dair - actually wearing a helmet [b]may [/b]increase your risk of accident - risk compensation. You feel more confident so you go faster and higher. Well known psycological phenomenon - although according to folk on here it does not apply to cyclists. Try riding without a helmet and you will be more cautious.

Old grump - have a look into the helmets testing standards. Serious questions have been asked about the rotational forces aspect where cycle helmets come off very badly, sizing of helmets and retention systems. Read some research - you assumption is common but not at all reasonable IMO. Plenty of evidence of helmets causing injury. Diffuse axon injury or broken necks from rotational impacts is one. The other main oine is because the head is bigger when wearing a helmet it is more likely to hit things.

S'okay - I'm a pin head, so even with a helmet on doesn't catch on too much....

Oaky, from the other side of the "discussing" does anyone think they would suffer more significant injuries if they DID wear a helmet?

Try riding without a helmet and you will be more cautious.

...and more anxious..less relaxed...more likely to have an accident? The type of accidents that you might have due to this are the ones where you are not likely to be seriously injured.

TJ just a quick question.
If you knew a housebrick was going to fall on your head from 6 feet above, would you feel safer with or without a helmet?

Tonto - the answer is mu - unask the question! The answer is not to be under the falling housebrick.

Think I'll take a lie down. Just not sure now whether it should be with or without a helmet 🙁

If you ride a bike you must be prepared for the house brick 🙂

I think helmet wearing should be personal choice, we don't ban people from being fat or drinking excessively, and these are essentially increase our risk of death. This said several years ago I was hit by a car riding into work, alongside brokens wrists/ ankle and popped shoulders and knee, my head hit the curb stone with enough force to cause me swelling of my brain. The helmet did it's job fine, absorbed as much of the impact as it could, and having seen a bit of head trauma working A&E for 16 years I am pretty sure I would have been dead without the helmet. Whilst there are a variety of different ways I could have been killed that a helmet would not have saved me from, a helmet can save your life, so my choice is wear one.

Haze - Member

Smashed my Xen on Thursday night, hate to think how I'd be feeling now if I'd not been wearing it!

W'happen Daz?

i've had three major crashes where wearing a helmet has saved my life at least once and saved me from serious injury if not death on the others.

1. flipped straight over bars by totally c#cking up a drop on the Mary Townley Loop ,landed head first into some boulders splitting a Giro Zen - wasn't sure who I or where I was for about an hour after (but carried on riding -thanks Dave!!!) when I took the helmet back the shop accused me of smashing it with a sledge hammer

2. hit side ways on by a Volvo that not only knocked me over, but proceeded to drive over the top of me - much happier to have it drive over my helmet than my actual head.

3. head first into the back of a camper van (he reversed out of a concealed entrance) - suspected brocken neck, paralysed from waist down for 2 days , fortunately neck not brocken but some damage done to spine. Neuro-surgeon was quite clear that the Etto helmet, although in bits, had done what it was designed to do and judging by the damage done to the van (with my head) and state of helmet; without it I would not be here. I'd just found out I was gonna be a dad for the second time the day before - so without that cabbage style hat my wife could well have been left to bring up two very young boys on her own.

NO HELMET NO RIDE ! Unless of course you're one of those people with relly thick skulls 😉

stAn-Bad Brains MBC

Unfortunately you simply cannot extrapolate like that. You simply have no way of knowing what would have happened had you not had the helmet on. Basic science.

1) fair enough - the helmet may have saved you from a more serious injury

2) The helmet does not have the rigidity to hold a cars weight off your head - they are not rigid.

3) - the spinal damage you received may well have been exacerbated by the helmet. This is one of the major drawbacks with helmets - swapping brain injury for spinal injury and all unquantifiable

My interpretation is no more or less valid than yours - you simply cannot say what would have happened without a helmet.

Really? If that's the case I'm off to buy a long-overdue lottery ticket, given a lid did just that

The thing to look for isn't deaths, it's the number of serious head injuries. IIRC when motorcycle helmets were made compulsory, the number of serious head injuries shot up, because riders were fracturing their skulls rather than dying, so the helmets were doing their job.

Tom - the gully behind Wordsley church, where Paul had one of his many punctures (!), clipped the bollard bottom of the hill.

Span me 'round and I smashed the back of my head on the pavement - helmet's a write off, ribs are painful - head and bike ok though! 😛

fram aracar

Good call. >100 lottery winners every year. In 1992 (before any significant helmet use) <100 cyclist deaths due to head injuries. Of course you should also consider that the number of cyclist deaths due to head injuries hasn't decreased significantly since then. So I'd suggest your chance of winning the lottery is far higher than your chance of a bike helmet preventing you being killed.

Hmm thats really scientific. I mean no other variable changed in that time frame. More Mountain biking, more cars on the road, cars going faster, cars that make you feel safer as a driver

Secondly this 1 in a million thing is looking douptful. Lets assume that people who haven't been saved by a helmet ignore this thread. It would still about 3,000,000,000 people to have viewed this thread to come up with the stories so far. Or do helmets save 1 in a miilion of the whole population, most of whome don't cycle

secondly I'm not sure of the downsides of a helmet off road. I know about risk compensation but that gives an element of choice

Lastly how do helmets increase the risk of other injuries. Please explain the mechanism for this

My understanding was that many more motor cyclist now have an increased prevelance of shoulder nerve damage but only because they survived crashes that would have killed them without a helmet.

 

I've had two crashes and thank gawd I was wearing a helmet.

Came off and banged side of head around ear area. I really did see stars, just like a cartoon. Cracked helmet.

Another, front wheel dug in somewhere on a trail and I went down. Only to get the bike swing over and the cassette etc. smashed into back of my head. Only a trashed helmet THANKFULLY 🙂

I don't give a shit if people don't want to wear one, but I'm am for sure.

I think my helmet did help when i headbutted a dry stone wall at surprise view,after coming off my road ibke doing about 25 mph. It did crack and i did have concussion for two and a half weeks,but considering how lumpy the wall i headbutted is,i think it probably stopped a lot of force from being concentrated on one part of my skull,which would have been a bad thing to have happened to it.

Heeling vibes to Dennis tell him though that rigid ss are for the beardy weirdy types. 😕

I just can't understand TJ's viewpoint at all. I've been biking 2 years and written off 2 helmets in that time. I probably wouldn't have died in either case but I know the helmets prevented serious damage to my skull. Is there actually anybody who has come out of a crash saying I wish I had not been wearing a helmet?

Does anyone know how the guy that crashed on spooky woods at Glentress today is? He had a really bad head injury, some bad cuts and was semi-concious but not responsive when I came across him a few minutes after the crash. He was wearing a helmet and I think it would have been much worse if he hadn't been.

On another note I've destroyed a helmet in a crash but came out relatively unscathed. If I didn't have that helmet on it would have been my head taking the impact that destroyed my helmet and I wouldn't have come out unhurt. You can bullshit all you want about lottery and chances of injury but just look at Natasha Richardson- it doesn't take that much of a head injury to cause serious damage so I'd rather not take the chance for the sake of not wearing a helmet. Perhaps the reason that there aren't that many biking deaths due to head injuries is that about 95% (maybe more) of the people I see at trail centres wear helmets.

ampthill - you do not know how many people have been saved by a helmet as you simply cannot state what would have happened without the helmet.

I took the one in a million chance as an example - but its the right area of magnitude. a very small ( a dozen or so) cyclist die each year from head injuries and only some of those would have been saved by helmets.

Mechanism for helmets causing injuries. There are two - firstly the helmet increases the volume and weight of the head making it more likely to hit something. Obviously something that is larger has more chance of a random impact.

Secondly rotation - experimentally it has been shown that in oblique impacts helmets give a rotational force to the head that is much less without a helmet - two factors - the greater diameter of the helmet and friction between the helmet and obstacle. This causes two sorts of injury - spinal injuries and what is known as a diffuse axon injury - similar to shaken baby syndrome. Without a helmet this oblique impact imparts less rotational force ( theoretically) as the scalp slides over the skull reducing the rotational acceleration. When tested cycle helmets come out very badly for rotational impacts - worse than many other sports helmets.

As for motorcycle helmets - there was not much decrease in injury as most motorcyclist were wearing helmets before compulsion and a reduction in deaths was accompanied by an increase in injuries which it is difficult to say what the cause was - more folk surviving or more getting hurt.

Devs - I have been biking for 40 yrs and have never hit my head. If you hit your helmeted head and have no injury it is very likely that you would have had a very minor injury without it - that is the magnitude of the foirces involved.

I'll just say it once more for the record - I do wear a helmet at some times - when a rational risk assessment says it is merited. I don't when the odds are very low.

There are two points that get confused here
1) cycling is safes and when cycling in a safe manner (
traffic / jump / rock free) I want the freedom to not wear a helmet

2) helmets are distinctly flawed in design and testing and provide far less protection than many folk seem to think and in some rare circumstances can cause or exacerbate injury

hope your mate gets well soon and im glad he was wearing a helmet.

What knottie says... Glads to read that it took TJ 4 post to give is best recovery to your mate...

TandemJeremy thanks for your reply. I wasn't aware of the rotation research

So I did some reasearch.

My conclusion is that

1. Most (or all) of the research doesn't look at off road cycling
2. The anti helmet compulsion lobby are probably doing much harm by sugesting that helmets aren't a good idea

I'm not in favour of making helmets compulsory but I really don't like the idea of promoting the "you may as well not bother with a helmet" argument when I'm not sure that there is much evidence (any) evidene about helmet use off road

Refusal to wear a helmet = Darwinism in action 😉

I'll just say it once more for the record - I do wear a helmet at some times - when a rational risk assessment says it is merited. I don't when the odds are very low.

Thats priceless.

I'll repeat

Using that logic I wouldn't have been wearing a helmet during an impact bad enough to wipe my memory, during which the helmet performed as designedcompressing to reduce the force

Off road how do you benefit by not wearing a helmet?

ampthjill = absolutely true that very little research is done into offroad biking.

I agree with you about the " might as well not bother" argument. Totally fallacious.

My argument is simply that [b][i]some[/b][/i] of the riding I do is so low risk that I am prepared to accept that risk of millions to one of getting a head injury preventable by a helmet.

It is simply more pleasant not to wear a helmet.

Hope he's ok.

Let the idiots ride without helmets and see what happens.

Forget seat belts too.

My helmet has saved me many times!

I think (actually I'm pretty sure) that helmets are more popular with serious recreational MTBers and road riders than with leisure cyclists.

Therefore most bikers who don't wear helmets are probably travelling at much lower speed, on much easier terrain.

If helmets were banned overnight, I find it very difficult to imagine anything other than a sharp increase in death and serious head injuries.

Devs - I have been biking for 40 yrs and have never hit my head. If you hit your helmeted head and have no injury it is very likely that you would have had a very minor injury without it - that is the magnitude of the foirces involved.

Well done. You are obviously such a great biker that you'll never have a crash. Let me tell you about the forces involved. I weight 17st and hit the ground at 28.7mph. My helmet cracked in half as did my shoulder. Apart from passing out every time I tried to stand up my head escaped unscathed. My shades prevented the skin getting wripped off my face too. I'm glad I was wearing them and my helmet.
I hear and understand your theories and stats but they won't help you on the day when the head/hard object impact occurs. As I asked before, who has had a crash and regretted wearing a helmet? I'm not seeing any here.
Peace and love and all that stuff and I hope you never have to test your theories.

Devs - the answer to that is everyone who has had a serious spinal injury from mountainbiking.

Are you saying they are all down to the rotational forces caused by helmets???

Well, fudge the rotation this rotation that, risk this risk that...I for one am glad I wear a helmet, and believe it or not the one incident that sticks in my mind more than any other is nothing to do with a really heavy landing or being knocked out, it's the time I crashed on to a broken picnic bench and impaled my helmet on a sticky-outy nail, only an inch or so long but I am sure as hell glad my helmet took that impact and not my head.

anyway, even if you're not sold on the spine and brain injury aspects TJ there's a lot to be said for a helmet sliding down the tarmac and ending up with a few scuffs versus your head and a nice scalping...

I'll wear mine and be happy thank you very much

Why are there so many discussions about this? Wear one if you want, don't wear one if you don't want.

As someone said above, I feel wierd without one - and am generally glad to have it on when I crash. Fair play to those who don't like em, that's their choice.

Daz - that is why I don't ride bikes anymore 8)

I agree it is about risk assessment- I personally assess that it is extremely risky not to wear a helmet (well, barking actually)- just like it is very risky to go off road on your own. Therefore I wear a helmet and when I see someone else off road on their own especially at nght or without a helmet I think 'what a silly billy' (or words to that effect), acknowlege that they are far braver than me and just hope they get back in one piece. But if they wish to do that's fair enough, although I have a paramedic cousin who would argue and does, often, very strongly that it is very selfish to do so considering a bad potentally preventable accident can affect people other than yourself

TJ – I hear and understand what your say about the research, and would agree that more ‘real world’ research is called for looking at all forms of cycling and the issues related to crash protection.

However, two things spring to mind – I’ve had 3 crashes were I believe (given the evidence) my helmet saved me from a significant head injury if not a fatal injury – both were just riding along crashes – one involved the catastrophic failure of equipment (albeit at speed although this was not a contributory factor) – the other was low speed, on the tow path caught a tyre edge on a raised cobble & went out the side catching a small concrete block on its corner

Neither were predictable neither were particularly preventable – how would such event fit in with your notion of only wearing a helmet when you need it

Why are there so many discussions about this?

Well put aracer. I object to being called stupid and selfish for taking a rational approach that relies on evidence but does not agree with the majority view.

I also really object to the "helmet saved my life" rhetoric as this simply cannot be stated. The original post on this there are two interpretations (at least) firstly the helmet failed and failed to prevent injury or that the helmet worked and saved more serious injury. There is no way of knowing which is correct.

Breakneckspeed - if you had no injury with a helmet then you would have only had a minor injury without one. Very unlikely to have been catastrophic injury in those circumstances. Helmets do not change an incedent which would be a major injury without a helmet to zero injury with.

I wear a helmet to mainly protect my head from scrapes and bangs from dense singletrack (branches etc) and general knocks from messing around on the bike. The peak also helps protect my eyes along with glasses. In 20 years on riding I've crashed many times; I can't say whether the helmet stopped me from drinking through a tube right now. All I know is that the last big stack I had if there was no helmet I wouldn't be here. High speed, head first (top of the head) into a pointed rock. The helmet had a inch and a half hole in it just stopping short of my skull.

It is about risk assessment and if people don't want to wear them then fair enough. I've just got into the habit of always wearing one.

Plenty of guff on the internet, anti helmet wearing forums etc give negative feedback from wearing and obviously pro-forums give the opposite.

The danger is slightly increased with the speed and type of terrain on a bike. People don't walk down the streets with a helmet on - they can easily trip and smack either the back of their head or side of the head on the kerb/pavement and die.

You will always get people banging away on a different drum beat anyway.